


Embers

by Dorksidefiker



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Drinking, M/M, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:54:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28475028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorksidefiker/pseuds/Dorksidefiker
Summary: A fire can burn for only so long, and a war can last only until it runs out of fuel.Possibly, some fires burn for longer than others.
Relationships: Jetfire | Skyfire/Starscream (Transformers)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 37
Collections: The Parts Bin Server Fic Exchange 2020-2021





	Embers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DarkDanc3r](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkDanc3r/gifts).



> Written for DarkDanc3r and The Parts Bin Fic Exchange.
> 
> I was asked for an end-of-war fic with any two cross faction bots flirting. I hope this is acceptable.

All wars end. Eventually, they must, be it in blood and thunder, or a slow fizzling, or something in between.

The war for Cybertron ended with a farce, or so Starscream insisted. The simple reality was that the war would have ended centuries before if Shockwave had been anything less than a true believer (or just too stubborn to compromise, Elita-One would mutter when the subject came up). And even the unexpected return of Optimus and Megatron to the battle field proved to be nothing more than a brief flare up in a conflict that had long since burnt down to dying embers.

After only a few short decades, both sides found themselves being brought to peace talks, however unwillingly it might have been. Everyone blamed the Quintessons and the humans, the former providing the pressure of an armada all their own, and the latter by demonstrating that they could and would do everything in their power to keep the war for Cybertron from consuming their own world, and to hell with both sides if they didn’t get their acts together. Megatron was not at all pleased with either fact, and the Decepticons quickly learned to not bring them up.

Especially not the humans.

But still, it meant that mechs on both sides of the conflict frequently found themselves crowded into the same room, most of them just waiting for the shooting to break out.

Elita-One watched it all with a wary optic.  _ She _ had been fighting the war for the whole of the four million years, and she worried that the mechs who had gone with Optimus on the Ark weren’t  _ really _ ready to let the old hurts of the war go. The start of the war was still so  _ fresh _ for most of them.

“Permission to decapitate the first idiot who starts something and give their helm as a peace offering?” Chromia whispered, her gaze locked on the quietly glowering Sunstreaker and Sideswipe.

“... denied. And keep that sort of talk to yourself.”

“Fragsake, it’s like being stuck in a room full of feral turbofoxes.”

Elita couldn’t exactly disagree. One wrong move would set the room off in a ball of violence, and-

“What is  _ he _ doing?”

Elita’s helm jerked around, following Chromia’s line of sight… though what had drawn her attention was impossible to miss. Only Astrotrain rivaled the great white whale of a mech for size, letting him safely carry a platter of energon geodes out of everyone else’s reach as he made his way across enemy lines and straight to Megatron’s second in command.

_ Primus on a pogo stick!  _ Elita could feel time slowing down as her processor brought up the annoyingly sparse data file she had on-

_ Skyfire of Polyhelix, Shuttle Class, recovered from Planet Earth’s polar region after a failed interstellar exploration mission from before the start of the war. _ There was a list of degrees that had been meaningless since Megatron had bombed the Iacon Academy of Sciences into a crater, and a list of warnings from Red Alert almost as long as the list of meaningless degrees. Four million years of stasis had done nothing to help the mech’s rampant paranoia, and Skyfire was bringing the platter around by the time Elita had translated Red Alert’s ramblings.

_ Decepticon defector. Keep from all sensitive intel. _

She should have -- could have -- stopped time, stopped him from getting anywhere near Starscream, but that would have set off the powder keg-

Starscream looked down his nose at the platter in front of him, lips pursed, but he didn’t raise his arm to blow the impertinent shuttle’s helm off.

“Are those amethyst eggs?”

“With a mercury center. Your favorite.”

Elita was still trying to shove her way through the rapt, horrified onlookers when Starscream picked one of the glittering eggs up between two fingers. Weapons hummed ominously, Autobots ready to defend one of their own and Decepticons eager for a fight, but if Starscream noticed, he certainly gave no sign of it.

Or maybe he revelled in it. It was hard to tell, sometimes, with that smirk permanently welded to his face.

The egg disappeared into Starscream’s mouth with a crunch.

“Where on this sad little mud ball did you manage to dig up  _ parisite _ ?”

“A little mining operation in Colorado.”

It was easily the most polite and casual exchange of the entire evening. A pair of old friends casually chatting over a tray of sweets. Not even so much as a thinly veiled insult to be heard.

“If I didn’t know better, Skyfire, I’d swear that was a joke.”

Skyfire blinked the most innocent of blinks. “A joke? Oh no, not a joke. Maybe a pun.”

“Primus below, don’t you dare start using those again.” Another egg met its fate in Starscream’s mouth. “They are,” he sniffed, “forbidden.”

“I don’t see Professor Coil here to be offended by them, do you?”

“No, just me and my poor audials. I’m sure the Autobots find your idea of wordplay endlessly entertaining, but I am under no obligation to tolerate it.”

Skyfire let out a little gasp, his optics wide and his mouth slowly turning up in a wry grin that belayed his offended tone. “You told me you liked my puns.”

Starscream sniffed again, pretending to study his nail plates. “I liked watching Professor Coil’s processor melt down. Now, if you could perhaps harness that and turn it on Megatron…”

Megatron let out an offended growl, but Optimus clapped a hand on his shoulder and managed to turn him away, reminding the old warlord that they were there to talk terms, not to listen to Starscream be snippy.

It was like a dam breaking, or a balloon popping. All of the tension drained out of the room -- someone laughed, and Moonracer sidled up to Elita and Chromia. “Are they… flirting?”

“Can’t be. That would be…” Insane.

And then Starcream said something too low for Elita to hear, but there was no missing Skyfire’s answering laugh.

“Always knew he’d go traitor,” Red Alert muttered. “ _ Fliers _ .”

“Didn’t you hear, soldier? War’s over.”

* * *

“I think they sent you over to distract me.”

Skyfire tilted his helm up to look at the stars above them, smiling. It had been easier to make their way out of the Ark to talk than to deal with the optics all over them. “I’m glad you think they think that highly of me.”

“I’d hardly call being treated like a shiny bauble  _ thinking highly. _ ” Starscream turned to look back at the Ark. “I should be in there. Megatron’s going to give away the planet without me there.”

“I’m sure he won’t get far along without you.”

“Damn right,” Starscream muttered, dropping onto the rock Skyfire had claimed for a perch. It was so much  _ quieter _ out there. He could almost forget that this dirtball was crawling with allegedly sapient organic life that had damn near blown him to pieces just a few weeks before. “We didn’t lose, you know.”

Skyfire nodded. Technically, the war had been declared a stalemate, ended so that they might come together to defend against the threat of the Quintesson armada. None of the official proclamations said anything about the humans and their very pointed role in the end of things. It had taken Starscream days to pound the dents out.

He really should have been at Megatron’s side during the negotiations, not off stargazing with a mech he’d lost millions of years ago.

“I managed to sneak a bottle of Nightmare Fuel out of the stores.”

And  _ that _ was why Starscream was stargazing instead of making sure he was getting his due in the peace settlements. “I haven’t tasted real Nightmare Fuel since Iacon fell.”

Skyfire produced the bottle, not bothering with the kind of flourish Starscream would have expected from anywhere else. Skyfire didn’t need flourishes, he just needed to be… himself. “Blur’s been talking about reopening Maccadam’s when we get back to Cybertron. He’s not a half bad chemist.”

“Too twitchy. He’d blow up the first batch and take half a block with him.”

Oh, the Nightmare Fuel was the  _ good _ stuff. Starscream could see the way the luster impregnated oil and energon clung to the glass of the bottle, creating swirling galaxies between Skyfire’s hands. Somehow, the delicate vessel had managed to survive not only Cybertron, but the flight of the Ark, the Ark’s crash, four million years, and another two decades of being surrounded by a battalion of tasteless and tacky grounders who would have gulped it down without a second thought.

A miracle in a bottle.

_ I might already be a little drunk.  _ There had been a delightful abundance of high grade being passed around earlier in the night, though none of it had been vintage Nightmare Fuel.

He should have gone back inside. He should have recognized this as some sort of Autobot trap, baited with the only thing they had that Starscream might have valued.

“No cubes,” Starscream noted.

“You never had an issue sharing a bottle before.” Skyfire didn’t smirk. His tone was as gentle and sweet as it had ever been, in spite of everything. He even offered Starscream the first pull.

“I do believe you are trying to seduce me.”

“Is it working?”


End file.
